The decision by some school administrators to close before the official closing date of April 15, 2022, has sparked heated discourse from a majority of parents that have expressed their dissatisfaction.
The national school and institution calendar indicated that the schools term was supposed to operate for a total of 14 weeks instead of the usual 12 weeks to enable students to catch up following two years of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This implies that learners who reported to school on January 10th, 2022, are expected to leave school for the first term holidays on April,15. But some schools have decided to send the learners back much earlier.
However, parents are not satisfied with this decision that they deem unfair, since schools should use these extra two weeks to teach the learners instead of sending them back home.
Annet Ankunda, a mother of a child in S3 who was sent back home this week says some schools are acting unprofessionally.
Ankunda further suggests that if it were possible, learners would not even be given holidays since they had two years at home.
According to one head teacher, some of the schools were closed because they had opened two weeks earlier before the government allocated date of January 10th. As such they argue that releasing learners one or two weeks earlier than the scheduled date should not be a cause of concern since no learning time will be lost by closing early.
Lawrence Ssemujju, the deputy head teacher of City Secondary School located in Wakiso district says they are planning on closing on April 8th since they opened on January 5th. According to him, the learners have covered what was intended to be covered in the first term and there is no reason to keep them longer at school.
However, some students are expressly unhappy with this decision, as they feel that they needed more time at school in order to grasp the subjects in which they were rather lacking.
Mulwana says instead of the government continuously issuing warnings to schools that violate rules and policies, they should start closing them so that the education sector remains with service providers interested in teaching and not just making money.
Similarly, Veronica Nakalema, a parent and also a leader in Mulago Parish says that the act of some schools closing earlier than the official date should attract punishment by the Ministry of Education and Sports.
According to Nakalema, some parents go through a lot to get the fees expecting their children to learn fully based on the calendar. She adds that schools are doing this to save on the expense of both the learners and their parents.
Dr. Joyce Moriku Kaduccu, the State Minister in charge of primary education, says that breaking off before the official date is illegal and might attract sanctions given the fact that schools are expected to respect the calendar.
Dr Kaducu further calls upon school heads to be more considerate to the parents whom they charged exorbitant fees during the reopening in the name of expanded time.